Second of all, though: you can see that quite a bit has changed. Welcome to Listening to War: Reflections on Words Heard Only Askew. For a fuller explanation, see the Paving the Road Back tab above, or click here.

If you’re a new friend: good to meet you. On my new Twitter account (@deaton_rod), I advertise myself as “just a country psychiatrist trying to make a living by listening, reading, and thinking.”

Welcome to just that.

Recently I’ve been listening to Roy Scranton‘s debut novel, War Porn. Good way through it, at this point. The ugly stuff is ramping up. I suspect that Professor Scranton, who teaches down the street from me at Notre Dame, might argue that, well, that’s War for you.

This morning, though, I heard the Audible narrator read former President George W. Bush’s speech to the United States at the time of the initiation of the fighting in Iraq. The narrator gave a nice rendition of the President’s twang. I had to admire it as I pulled into the parking lot of my clinic.

I parked the car. I listened to the speech. I turned the book off. But not the car. Not yet.

Fourteen years it’s been since that speech. At the time I was working out of a nondescript office in downtown Indianapolis, occasionally walking down to the local Starbucks on Mass Ave to enjoy a latte in the corner of the store, staring at the latest in the window of the toy store across the street.

But this morning, some two and half hours away from that cafe, miles and miles away within my soul, I heard words I must have heard some time around then, must have, spoken in my native tongue, assuring me that all would be…

Yes. Would be.

I turned off the car and headed into work. Too many words ahead of me to think anymore about those words. Too many words, too many lives since those were first spoken.

I’m a much older man now. So is Professor Scranton. So are we all, men, women, the then-infants who are now leaving middle school.